Conventionally, a service which connects a server and client via a network such as the Internet or the like, launches a WWW browser of the client, accesses the server based on a URL held in advance by an application program of the client, and presents a page that provides printer information or a page that sells expendables has been proposed.
However, since the aforementioned service displays the predetermined sales page, when the remaining amount of a given ink of expendables of a printer becomes small, the server can only generate a page that presents all inks corresponding to that model. For example, when the printer uses ink tanks of six colors, even when the ink remaining amount of only one of six colors is small, the server can only present a sales page for all ink tanks of six colors corresponding to the notified model.
In this way, the user of the client must determine an ink tank, the remaining amount of which has become small in practice, from the presented ink tanks by himself or herself, and must select that ink tank from the page presented by the server.
Since the remaining level (remaining amount) of each ink tank cannot be notified, the server cannot present purchase of an ink tank in correspondence with the remaining amount of each individual ink tank. That is, the user must determine purchase of an ink tank in comparison with another page that shows the ink remaining amounts of the printer.
Furthermore, when the ink remaining amount of the printer becomes small, the user must search for or select a server suited to purchase such as a sales site of a retailer where he or she purchased the printer, so as to purchase ink tanks corresponding to that model.
When a printer retailer wants the user to continuously purchase expendables of the printer in addition to the printer itself, it cannot easily guide the user who wants to purchase to its sales site.
When the server has moved from the URL that is held in advance by the application driver and the URL is invalid, a page used to purchase ink tanks cannot be displayed.